Hiring Subs

I hire out a lot of my work to qualified people. If you have a independent contractors agreement it covers your arse. (Thats a** for my American mates) Ok here are the pros and cons. First it frees you up to do your other work and advertising and consulting. If you have a qualified person or crew it makes better business sense. You get the contract or individual job and they do the work and you see the work and if you and the customer are happy then you have done your job. I would add that a noncompete clause be added in the sub contractors contract. As you have employed them as a independent contractor you are released from any insurance and taxes due,its their duty. I normally pay around 35% of the cost of a job to them. This is a basic contractors deal when doing almost anything. I pay my people in a check and then the taxes are on them. Get a good accountant and he will say the same. Form 1099. If you have a good volume of work this all makes sense.
Just my two cents worth.

Interesting idea my ex-boss thinks a lot like you constantly taking on jobs he doesnt want with the hopes of making a few dollars off some one else. I have done a little work as a sub contractor I wont ever touch that again if the estimator turns out to be poor at his job your stuck working for what seems like minimum wage after the contractor takes his cut. As for myself when I do come across larger jobs or work I'm simply not interested I have no problem passing on it I dont need every dime on the plate there is plenty to be made cant see why id want the aggravation of setting jobs up with others when I have enough of that fun task just with my own crews. Well thats my thoughts on the subject

So when you have work you can't perform or won't you find someone that will and offer to them? Are there contracts between the two? Say a the job is worth $1000.00 and 35% is $350.00. The $350 is what I would profit and the rest is for the sub. I don't know a whole lot about it as you can tell, but if someone could help, it would be great.

Subcontracting can be good can be bad. Mostly, it depends on quality of your subs and how yo treat them. Subcontracting in landscaping is being the overseer in a project and lining up all the work by the use or either all someone elses employees or a combinaton of your employees and someone elses. Basically you are utilizing someone else expertise in a given field to complete a task or tasks of a project. For this, you generally find a sub who can do the work mostly better and or to a less degree cheaper than you and sometimes you get a better price since you arrange all the non-labor issues so that all the sub has to do is show up do the work and get paid on time. For this you figure either a % or time invested for the job and oversee that all work was done as specified. Alot of times the amount of profit subbing can be the same as you doing the work and having none of the time invested besides getting/lining up the work if you find right sub. For example, I am subbing the transplanting of some very large trees 6" diameter and am paying $120 /ea. For this I am charging $165 each and am doing no more than showing the sub where to plant the trees. This way he (sub) has no time contact with customer and all his time is billable. Where I have to meet with customer since alot of time is needed for other parts of the job. All I do for making the $45 per tree is show him where the tree go and ensure that he puts them there and deal with any problems that may arise. I end up making much more money since I am able to continue on doing what I do and make money at best and limit my liabililty while adding about $45 per hour to my profit per hour since he is able to plant one per hour and will do so for several days. Where as if I were to do the entire thing myself would probably be a complete disaster, cost more to him and I would probably lose money or inevitably get less of the more profitable work that I'm better at.